


the glamor fades

by yeswayappianway



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M, Multi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-05-31 15:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15122765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeswayappianway/pseuds/yeswayappianway
Summary: A trio of Knights go on a quest to rescue their missing goalie.orJon looks at Bill and Reilly. “Where the fuck do we even start?” It’s one thing to say they’ll go look for Flower, but now that they’re actually meant to be doing it, Jon is realizing that he has no idea what to do.





	the glamor fades

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Catznetsov](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/pseuds/Catznetsov) in the [PuckingRare2018](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/PuckingRare2018) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
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>  
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> +William Karlsson/Jonathan Marchessault/Reilly Smith  
> or any other
> 
> It's been a fairytale year; please write me a fairytale. You can keep it modern or a medieval romance with all these somewhat goofy but brave knights. The Thousand And One Goalies before finding the perfect fit. Lonely orphan William Karlsson has a chance to shine at a ball. Young knight Nate Schmidt sets out to seek his fortune. Someone gets three wishes.
> 
>  
> 
> constantine, i LOVED this prompt, and i hope you enjoy this fic!
> 
> title from Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), by Florence + the Machine (this whole fic was written to a florence soundtrack basically, if you want extra ambiance)
> 
> a big thank you to ash, coco, and nicole for reading this and beta-ing. HUGE thanks to remiges for talking this whole thing through with me originally, and bouncing ideas back and forth.

_Once upon a time, in the far-off land of Las Vegas, a there was brave group of Knights. Their true bravery may be debated, but they were Knights, and knights were brave, or so the stories go. These Knights had no leader, but they did have one Knight who had won renown defending another land before arriving in Las Vegas. During one of their skirmishes, he had been injured, or so the others had been told. The other Knights worried, because his injury seemed unpredictable, and they had not seen him in some time. They took it upon themselves to investigate his malady, and found that a strange magic had taken him away—his family had been enchanted to forget his absence, and the Knights’ employers would not answer their queries. Thus, the Knights took it upon themselves to find their lost brother. They picked three of their own to send on this quest, as a trio was the most traditional number, and they knew, as so many come to see, that magic was merely another kind of story._

\-----

Jon looks at Bill and Reilly. “Where the fuck do we even start?” It’s one thing to say they’ll go look for Flower, but now that they’re actually meant to be doing it, Jon is realizing that he has no idea what to do.

Shrugging, Bill says, “Is there somewhere we could ask for help?” He looks almost as lost as Jon feels.

“That’s not a bad idea, actually,” says Reilly. “There’s got to be, like, a wishing well, or a tree we can leave offerings at.”

Personally, Jon’s not sure there’s a single real tree in the whole city, but it’s still a good start. “Who do you think would know about that?” he asks. Before Reilly can answer, Bill holds up his phone.

“The fountain over by the university answers questions, but you have to have to throw in dollar coins apparently?” Bill reads.

After a moment of stunned silence, Jon says, “How did you _find_ that so fast?” Reilly seems equally confused.

Bill flips the phone around to show them the screen. “I just googled it. It’s a debate about…” he trails off as he scrolls down the screen. “Where to leave an offering for best wedding luck, apparently? Oh, wait, this person is asking about graduation. It seems like the kind of thing we want, anyway.”

Jon exchanges a look with Reilly. “Can’t hurt,” says Reilly.

\-----

“Do you think it would have been more helpful if we’d had real American dollar coins?” Reilly asks, his face a little blank.

“Hey!” Jon says defensively. “Did you have any dollar coins? No! So I don’t want to hear it. Canadian money makes more sense anyway,” he adds mulishly.

Bill’s walked a little ahead of the two of them, so Jon can’t quite tell how he feels, but he says, “I think we got a good enough answer anyway. We know we should look for a doorway that doesn’t actually exist, and that we can find it somewhere in the arena.” He keeps walking, but turns around after a few more seconds, looking back at Jon and Reilly just standing there. “What? That’s what it told us.”

“How did you get that from whatever ‘seek a pathway hidden and not’ bullshit we heard from that fountain?” Jon demands.

Reilly stares at him. “How did _you_ manage to remember even that much? I barely wrote down the second half.”

Jon snorts. “That explains so much.” Reilly flips him off, and walks past Jon to join Bill. Jon hurries to catch up. “Okay, so, we know where to start. Should we get—I don’t know, supplies or anything? Do we know what’s on the other side of this magic fake door?” Listen, Jon’s not going to claim to be the best at thinking ahead, but this is important.

“I feel like maybe we should take less stuff with us,” Reilly says thoughtfully. “How do we know our regular shit won’t get lost while we’re— _there_. Wherever there is.” Jon wants to argue, but it makes some sense, and it will make this whole thing easier for them. “Bill?” Reilly asks.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, I think probably less stuff is good. I don’t even know if our phones would work, and I can’t think of much else that would really help.” Bill seems a little distracted, which Jon takes some offense to.

“Alright, but I think we should take some water and a snack,” Jon says stubbornly. He can’t stop thinking about an article he read when he was younger about some hikers who got stuck in the desert and nearly died. 

Reilly looks skeptical, but he nods. “Sure, I guess that’s probably good form for going anywhere, magic or not. Never took you for the team mom type, Jon.”

“Ah, fuck off,” Jon says, but he’s grateful for the chirp, even as weak as it was. This whole morning has been way too serious, and the moment of amusement makes him feel a little more in control.

\-----

“Well,” says Bill, looking a little shell-shocked. “I think that’s our door that’s not a door.”

They’re standing in front of an ornate door painted on a wall in the hallway between the locker room and the trainer’s room at T-Mobile. Jon’s walked by here hundreds of times, and he’s absolutely positive that this had never been here. “Why is this here? Why now?” he asks, the hair on the back of his neck standing up. Jon hasn’t had a lot of experience with magic in his life, but he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that what he’s feeling right now is very powerful.

Reilly reaches out a hand as if to touch it, but stops a few inches away from the painted door. “Maybe because we were looking for it?” he suggests in a hushed tone. Jon doesn’t know if Reilly’s being respectful or cautious, and he doesn’t know which worries him more.

Bill frowns. “Does that mean…” he looks nervously at the door and swallows loudly, “That it knows we’re here?”

They all freeze, and the door seems to glow slightly, but now that Jon thinks about it, the door might have been glowing the whole time. Nothing jumps out at them, so Jon takes a half step forward. “How do we open it?” he says, inspecting the edges. Reilly makes a sort of strangled noise to his left.

“We can’t just charge right in, Marchy! What if it’s—a trap, or something’s waiting on the other side!” says Reilly. Jon ignores him and reaches for the painted handle.

When his fingers get close enough to touch the wall, Jon almost yells. His fingertips pass into the wall somehow, and close around what feels like a metal door handle. He grabs it and pulls firmly.

It’s really trippy. The door still looks painted and flat, but it’s clearly open, standing apart from the wall. Jon takes a deep breath and walks through. He can hear Bill and Reilly’s voices distantly echoing behind him, even though they should only be a couple feet away.

Jon seems to be standing backstage at a very fancy theater. Maybe if he’d been to more shows around the city, he’d recognize something, but as it is, he can’t figure anything else out. A few seconds later, he turns, just before Reilly and Bill stumble toward him. This makes Jon realize two things. One, he knew they were there before they showed up, which is vaguely concerning, but maybe also useful on the ice. And two, he doesn’t see the door. They seem to have just appeared out of the darkness on the side of the stage.

“Oh, shit,” Bill says, and then winces when it carries loudly in the quiet of the empty theater. Jon’s about to ask him if he knows where they are when Bill reaches into the pocket of his jacket and pulls out something small. At first, it looks like a coin (or a poker chip—they are in Vegas, after all), but then Bill holds it up to his eye, and Jon sees that it’s more of a flat ring. Bill looks through it at the theater and then at Jon and Reilly.

“Want to share with the class?” Jon mutters, when Bill doesn’t explain what he’s doing.

“Oh, uh,” Bill starts, putting the weird ring back in his pocket. “It’s, um, a tradition I grew up with? If you look through a stone with a natural hole in it, sometimes you can see magic.”

“Well?” asks Reilly, only slightly more polite than Jon. “Can you?”

Bill looks embarrassed. “Yeah, but um, it’s just kind of… everywhere? So it didn’t help much. I should have guessed that, probably.”

“Can I see it?” Jon asks, momentary irritation swept away in the face of curiosity. Bill hands it over, and Jon looks through it. He gets what Bill meant—there’s just a glow coming from all directions, and it makes it hard to make out any specific details or sources. Until Jon passes over Reilly.

“Wait, what?” Jon exclaims. He looks at Reilly without the ring, then again with it. He’s definitely glowing very faintly gold through the stone ring. “You—do we have some sort of magic on us?”

Reilly doesn’t look as surprised as Jon wants him to be. “Probably. We’re on a quest, we gave a sacrifice to a magic fountain, we just passed through a door painted on a wall; I think we’re probably making ourselves part of a story.”

Not for the first time, Jon is equal parts impressed by and irritated with Reilly’s logical answers to everything. It’s like—sure, he’s way better at that kind of thing than Jon, but sometimes it really takes the wind out of your sails.

“Can I have that back?” Bill asks, his voice tense. Jon hands it over without comment. Bill doesn’t look surprised or reasonable. He looks worried. “I don’t like that idea,” he admits. “Are we in charge of the story, or are we stuck in it now?”

_Oh_ , Jon thinks. That’s a new and concerning concept. Reilly seems taken aback by it as well, and Jon decides to ignore it. Obviously they’ve got the whole worrying thing under control, so someone needs to move this quest along. “Well, we can’t do much about it now,” he announces. “So, where are we going next?”

Bill and Reilly exchange a look, which is probably about him, but Jon can handle it. Bill says, “We’re here. Look around backstage, I guess.” Jon nods decisively, and walks toward the other side of the stage. He crosses out onto the open part of the stage and looks toward the audience. There’s nothing. At first, he thinks it’s just dark, but the closer he looks, the more he gets the impression that the rest of the theater just… isn’t there. It makes his skin crawl, and usually Jon would ignore it, but he feels like maybe he should pay more attention to that kind of reaction now. He wonders what it would look like through Bill’s weird stone ring.

The other side of the stage is largely identical to the one they came into. There’s a few more large standing walls, which Jon assumes are some sort of backdrop for whatever may or may not go on here. He pokes around behind them, but nothing jumps out at him. He’s debating moving the curtain to see if there’s something hidden behind it when Reilly says, “Hey guys, I think I found something.” His voice seems to be coming from the back of the stage, and Jon follows it. Or—he thinks at first that he’s following Reilly’s voice, but when he thinks about it, he started moving before Reilly spoke. It’s like—like Reilly was pulling him in somehow, and Jon thinks for a second he feels a physical tug on his chest. It’s gone in an instant, and Jon gets distracted by the sight of Reilly staring at his reflection in a golden mirror.

Jon looks at Bill, who’s approached from the other side of the stage. “How did we miss that? Fucking thing’s huge and shiny,” Jon asks. Bill just shrugs and looks over Reilly’s shoulder. Jon joins them.

“Oh man, that’s weird,” Bill says. Jon agrees. It must be some sort of trick mirror, because there’s a huge raven perched somewhere behind them in the mirror, but when he turns, there’s nothing behind him.

“Weird,” the raven croaks.

They all stare at the mirror. Reilly is the first one to speak up. “What the fuck?” he asks, and Jon’s guiltily pleased that he sounds panicked. It’s good to have company.

The raven flaps its wings and re-situates itself on its nonexistent perch. “You come seeking the location of your friend,” it says in a voice that wouldn’t sound out of place coming from half the coaches in the league.

“Yes,” says Bill. He shifts very slightly in towards Jon and Reilly, and Jon feels absurdly like he’s failed to read a play.

“The path to him leads through here, but before you may pass, you must answer my question.” Jon doesn’t know much about birds, but he’d swear the raven looks smug. He glances at the other two, and what he sees is reassuring. Bill looks nervous but determined, like he’s getting ready to take a faceoff when they’re down by two, and Reilly’s got a gleam in his eye. Jon wonders if this is the kind of thing he’d dreamed of when he was a kid. Jon knows lots of people who dreamed of finding a real quest, reading about where the magic was strongest. It had never interested him. Jon just wanted to play hockey.

Jon looks back at the raven. “Ask us your question,” he says, and something in his chest reverberates when he says it. It feels right in an indescribable way, and he remembers what Bill had said about being in charge of the story, or just playing it out.

The raven shuffles again, and then opens its beak. “You have a mouth, but cannot talk. You can run but never walk. You have a head but never weep. You have a bed, yet never sleep.”

“Technically, that’s not a ques—” Jon starts, before Bill literally slaps a hand over his mouth.

“Shut up,” Bill hisses in his ear. “What if it counts that as the answer?” Jon would concede the point, except then why’s Bill whispering loudly at him? He doesn’t say anything, but he elbows Bill in the side. Quietly.

Reilly, on the other hand, has a look of intense concentration. The dramatic effect is slightly ruined by how part of his concentrating apparently involves going cross-eyed. Jon can see Reilly mouthing words, no sound coming out yet.

Bill backs off, taking his hand off Jon’s mouth, and Jon stays silent this time. He’s glad Reilly seems to know what he’s doing, because Jon is not a riddle kind of guy. Judging by the way Bill is shifting back and forth on his feet, he’s not either.

The raven opens its beak, and apprehensively, Jon steps back, just in case. Reilly speaks up, rushing his words. “Uh, a—a river! It’s a river. Riverbed, running water, the mouth of the river,” he rambles, and Jon marvels at how clear the answer seems once he says that.

“Very good,” the raven wheezes. “You may pass through to continue your quest.” It hops in place and Jon gets the impression that it’s anxious to say something.

Maybe Bill has the same idea, because he asks, “Can you tell us anything about what we will find?”

The raven cocks its head. “No, but I can give you advice. When you go to battle, you must trust your weapons, you must trust your own abilities, but most of all, you must trust your allies.” It leans towards them, suddenly huge. “Knights need to learn this most of all.” It leans even further towards them and Jon closes his eyes instinctively, and when he opens them, the raven is gone. The mirror gleams darkly, and he can see a pathway in it that he’s sure doesn’t exist behind them.

“It still wasn’t a question,” Jon gripes to cover his nerves. “Let’s go.”

They walk toward the mirror as one, but Bill and Reilly let Jon go first. He chooses to take it as a sign of their trust in him.

Much like walking through the painted door, passing into the mirror feels incredibly strange. There’s no sense of movement beyond taking one single step, but the scene on the other side is completely different. It looks like Jon—and the others, who follow close behind him—is in some street in Las Vegas, but it’s empty, not a person or a car to be seen. When Jon tries to take a closer look at the bright signs covering the billboards and walls, they always stay just out of focus. The whole effect is almost like he’s in game with bad graphics, and Jon is struck with the inane desire to wait for it to load.

“Whoa,” says Bill, wonder in his voice. Jon turns back to look at him, and immediately notices what Bill must have seen. Over Bill’s normal clothes, Jon can see a second layer, a glowing, translucent set of armor. He sees it on Reilly, too, and when Jon holds up his arm, he can see the faint outline of a gauntlet.

Jon blinks, and it’s gone. He looks up at the other two. “We all saw that, right? The armor?” Bill nods, and Reilly smiles crookedly.

“Well, if we’re knights, we have to look the part, I guess,” he says.

Bill cranes his neck to look up. “Do the buildings stop?” he asks. He shudders then, grabbing Jon’s arm to steady himself. “Oh. Um, I answered that, I think. They don’t,” Bill adds, in the same tone that Jon recognizes as desperately trying to act like this is normal.

“You good?” Jon asks, concerned. Bill nods and lets go of Jon’s arm. Jon feels like he’s lost something, and if he wouldn’t be chirped for the rest of his life, he might ask Bill to keep touching him. It felt—grounding, in this strange magic world where Jon thinks if he stops paying attention he might float away.

Reilly looks around again. “Where are we going?” he asks. “We went through the mirror, so what next—” Reilly stops abruptly.

The city has shifted around them, or maybe it was always like this and they just hadn’t seen it. Jon can very clearly see the road ahead of them stretching away into the distance, while everywhere else seems to end just inside their sight. “That way,” Jon says, pointing.

“Wow, thanks,” Reilly says, rolling his eyes. “Good navigation skills.”

“Anytime,” Jon shoots back, and starts walking.

It’s barely been five minutes when the road dead-ends at a building, but the way to their right is dark and obscured. To their left, it looks the same as the road they’d walked up to this point. “So,” says Bill, looking behind them as they turn left, “any guesses where this is leading us? Nasty swamp? Dragon cave? Creepy castle?”

Reilly looks dryly at Bill. “I mean, I think the desert is the obvious choice.”

Bill makes a face. “But that’s so boring.”

“I’d take boring right now,” Jon offers. “I just don’t think we’re going to get it.”

Another turn appears in the road ahead of them. The longer they walk, the more Jon feels like they’re wandering through a canyon rather than a city. They walk toward the indistinct building and turn right.

“Well, shit,” Jon says. The turn has somehow taken them into the middle of the desert. “I didn’t even notice it change!” he says, freaked out. “We were just— there, and now we’re here.”

Bill and Reilly look equally unsettled, although after a moment, Reilly says, “Told you so.”

“Ah, fuck you,” says Bill shakily. “Did we ever actually get water, or just talk about it?” It had been warm as they made their way through the city, but it’s much hotter here. Jon can’t actually see the sun, but he can feel it beating down on his face.

Reilly wordlessly holds out a water bottle to Bill, who takes it, and then stares at Reilly. “Did you… did you have this earlier?”

Grimly, Reilly answers, “Nope.”

Bill stares at the water bottle before shrugging and taking a long drink. He offers it to Jon, but Jon doesn’t want it. Drinking questionable liquids is bad enough in a normal setting, and here it seems like it might be a death sentence. He hopes not, though.

Reilly starts making his way forward. The sand is packed down hard, so at least walking isn’t too difficult. There’s a slight rise in front of them, and Jon follows Reilly up it. When they reach the top, Jon looks out across a vast expanse of Joshua trees.

“How the fuck do we know where to go now?” Jon doesn’t want to be a downer, but at least in the city, it had been obvious.

From behind them, Bill says, “I think it doesn’t matter. I think—” he swallows. “I think something is taking us where we need to go.”

“That’s worse,” Jon decides.

Reilly grimaces, and then offers, “Maybe it’s a good something?” They both look at him incredulously. “Yeah, okay. Probably not.”

Jon takes a deep breath. “Well, no choice then. Let’s go,” he says once more, and that strange feeling of rightness pulses in his chest again.

It’s quiet but not silent, the sounds of wind through the trees and noises that sound like little birds occasionally drifting to them. Jon is hesitant to speak, afraid of disturbing the natural hush. They walk for what could be hours or possibly minutes. It seems like they’ve been out of the strange city for a very long time, but Jon isn’t nearly tired or overheating enough to have been walking in the sun for that long.

Eventually, a harsh noise disturbs the quiet. It’s not that loud, but the quality of it is somehow wrong. As one, they stop and turn towards the new noise. Bill walks past the first tree to their left, stopping maybe ten feet away.

“Come here,” he says, his voice loud in the sudden stillness that surrounds them. Jon goes, and Reilly follows behind with a nervous glance behind them. There’s absolutely no way to tell which way they came from, or where they were heading, but Jon figures it can’t matter if they didn’t know in the first place. That’s what he’s telling himself, anyway.

Bill is standing in front of one of the Joshua trees, frowning at it. Jon realizes what the sound was pretty quickly. There’s a wire wrapped between two of its branches, and it lets out a metallic creak whenever the wind blows through it. Bill touches the tree, his frown morphing into something more sad.

“The wire’s cutting into the tree,” he whispers. “I’m going to try and get rid of it.” Jon looks at Reilly, who raises his shoulders in a half-hearted shrug. Should they help? Bill is already working at the wire. They watch, Jon periodically glancing over his shoulder in case something decides to ambush them, as Bill carefully pries loose the end of the wire embedded in the main trunk of the tree.

“Shit,” he hisses, pulling his hands back. Jon sees a bright spot of red on Bill’s finger—blood. Bill shakes out his hand, clenching and unclenching his fingers a few times before going back to the wire. Jon thinks he sees some of the blood smear on the tree. Reilly blanches, but when Jon tries to ask him, he just shakes his head. Looking back at the tree, Jon can’t find the blood anymore, and he has an uncomfortable thought about blood sacrifices. 

“There,” Bill says reverently. He must have gotten the ends unstuck, because he easily pulls the wire way from the tree, unwrapping the branch and the trunk. There’s a brief moment of hesitation, and then Bill curls the wire up and sticks it in his jacket pocket. He pats the trunk of the tree gently, and steps back.

The wind is gone for the moment, but the tree rustles loudly, and Jon feels like he can almost make out words. Then it’s gone, and the hush is back. When Jon looks past the now-freed tree, though, he can see the impression of a path and what seems to be a break in the trees ahead.

Bill looks back at the tree one last time as they start walking again, and Jon thinks he looks worried. “It’ll be okay,” Reilly says, patting Bill’s shoulder. Bill just nods.

Within a few minutes, they’re almost out of the Joshua tree forest. Jon thinks he can see more desert past the edge of the trees, but he’s not quite sure.

They reach the last few trees and step out to the sight of the desert in front of them disappearing into a cloud of dark fog.

“Well,” Jon says. “That’s encouraging.”

Hands in his pockets, Reilly says, “It probably is. I don’t think we’d find that if we were going the wrong way.” He stops suddenly. “Oh,” he breathes, looking at Bill.

The overlay of armor is back, and much more solid now. Jon can still see the Knights logo on Bill’s shirt, but he has to squint, and this time, the armor doesn’t seem to go away when he looks away. Tentatively, Bill reaches out and knocks on Reilly’s chest. There’s a metallic clang, and the armor appears on him as well, fading slightly once the noise goes away.

Jon doesn’t feel anything at first, but as he takes a few more steps toward the ominous fog, he can’t feel the wind very well, as if—as if the wind is hitting something before his skin. Like a suit of armor. Summoning bravado he doesn’t feel, Jon says, “Just like wearing pads. Now we’re ready for a real game, right?”

Reilly shakes his head, but Bill nods decisively. “Exactly. So, into— that?” He points at the swirling fog.

They move forward together, more cautiously than before. As they get closer, they begin to see a shape through the fog, and after a few minutes the shape is clear enough that Jon stops, dumbstruck.

“No way,” he says. “There’s no fucking way.”

There’s a castle in front of them. A full-sized, stone, medieval castle. 

Shakily, Bill says, “My turn. Told you so.”

He can’t help it. Jon laughs. His laughter is muted, maybe by the fog, but it still clears something in his head. Jon can’t know for sure, but he thinks it does the same for the other two. Bill and Reilly stand up a little straighter, and look toward the castle with purpose.

“I guess we know where Flower is,” Reilly says, part trepidation and part anticipation. Jon gets it. They’re hockey players. Everything seems much easier when you know who you’re playing, at what time, when you can see the ice. Sure, Jon has no idea how they’re going to get into the castle, or what they’ll find there, but their goal is in sight.

“Let’s go, boys,” says Bill, like this is just the start of another game, another shift.

Maybe it is.

They trudge toward the castle, its spiky towers and edges becoming clearer the closer they get. As they get close enough to make out a front gate, it becomes clear that there’s an obstacle in their way. A moat of some dark, indeterminate liquid surrounds the castle. There’s no bridge or boat as far as Jon can see, but they keep walking towards it.

“Did you hear that?” asks Reilly sharply. Jon freezes, and this time, he does hear it.

“Help,” someone calls weakly, and Jon rushes to the sound. He doesn’t have to go far.

In the middle of the moat, what seemed at first to be a lump of debris resolves itself into the shape of someone clinging to a floating beam. It seems to be an old woman, and she reaches out one arm uselessly to Jon as he stops at the edge of the moat.

“Please help,” she moans. Bill and Reilly arrive behind him and Bill makes a noise of shock when he sees her.

“What can we do?” Jon asks them, looking around for something, anything that he could reach her with.

Jon doesn’t see anything, and he’s already preparing to do something reckless when Reilly says, “I don’t know, but we have to get her out.” He’s kneeling down by the edge of the moat, wrinkling his nose. “I’m not sure this water is just water. It feels—bad,” Reilly says simply.

Jon’s made up his mind. “Okay, I’m going in. Bill, if you hold onto me, I think I can stretch out to reach her, and we can pull her back to this side.”

Bill looks a little panicked. “Reilly just said the water’s bad, didn’t you hear him? What if something happens?”

“That’s what Reilly’s here for, figure out what to do if everything gets fucked up,” Jon says decisively. Reilly looks up at him, eyes wide, but he stands up and nods.

Jon considers taking off some of his clothing; given that he can still see the shimmering armor over it, though, he’s not sure how that would go.

“Here goes,” and Jon steps into the water. It’s not cold, not hot, just—there, thickly surrounding his feet. It’s definitely not just water, but he’s not going to mention that. Moving one foot in front of him, Jon feels around for his next step and finds a steep drop about six inches in front of where he stands. “Okay, I think I’m going to need to just kind of—lie down on the water?

“This is a terrible plan,” mutters Bill, but he steps up next to Jon and grabs his calf tightly. Jon crouches down and carefully shifts onto his side. He has a moment of terror when he splashes through the surface of the water, but then he’s mostly floating, and he extends his body into the middle of the moat. Stretching his arm out toward the woman, Jon finds himself a few feet short.

“Can you lean out further?” he asks Bill, trying to keep his mouth above the water to speak. Jon can feel his clothes, soaked and strangely heavy despite still being in the water, and he wonders how long he can stay in the moat before he just falls below the water’s surface.

Bill glares at him, but edges closer to the edge of the water, and leans out over it. Jon floats closer to the woman, and she’s just out of reach. “Hey,” he says gently, and her eyes are wide as she makes eye contact. “Can you reach out to me?” Jon asks.

The woman, who looks even older up close, looks around desperately, and then reaches out for his hand with one shaky movement. His hand closes around hers solidly, and Jon nearly cheers. “Bill! Pull us back!” Bill does, and it’s much easier, although Jon basically has to roll onto the edge of the land. Reilly comes over and helps the woman out of the water. Bill snags the wooden beam she had been holding onto, and drags it to the shore.

“Thank you,” the old woman is repeating. “Thank you, thank you, thank you all.”

Bill looks up at the castle nervously. “Can you help us, ma’am?” he asks. The woman smiles for the first time, and it’s almost disconcerting somehow.

“Oh, yes,” she says, and Jon knows instantly that she wasn’t here by accident. This is yet another part of the story. “You need to get into the castle, yes? Yes, into the castle isn’t easy.” Reilly snorts quietly, and she raises an eyebrow at him before continuing. “You must cross the moat, and then once you are inside, don’t lose each other. You never know who’ll turn up,” she says, and there’s a glitter in her eyes that scares Jon. She turns to him then. “But you will know what to do, when the time comes.” She looks back at Reilly, and hobbles to him, taking his hand. Reilly startles, but she doesn’t let go. “A gift to you,” and it sounds like she whispers, but it’s somehow louder than anything else she had said. When she lets go of Reilly’s hand, he jumps back in shock.

A long sword appears in Reilly’s hand, gleaming in the same way as the armor—partially see-through, but very clearly visible. Jon assumes based on how Reilly is holding it that it actually weighs as much as a real sword. The woman cackles, and disappears. Before they can react, Jon hears her say, “Don’t mess it up!”

There’s a long pause while they all just stare at each other. “That happened, right?” Bill asks, finally.

Reilly doesn’t answer, just waves the sword around, which is really answer enough.

“How are we going to get across the moat?” Jon asks. “I think you’re right, I don’t think we should stay in the water long. It felt—heavy.”

Bill’s squinting at the wooden beam. “What if,” he starts, interrupting himself to say, “I know this is a bad plan, but we have to get across somehow. What if we we stab Reilly’s fancy new magic sword into the beam, and wrap the wire around the sword.” Bill pulls the wire from the Joshua tree out of his pocket. “We hold onto the other end of the wire, and push someone across on the beam. They make it to the other side, and then they hold onto the free end of the wire. They send the beam back to this side, and person number two goes across—whoever went across first can pull them to the far side. Do that again, and then we’re all across the moat, and we have our sword and our wire and our beam, and then we can go into the creepy castle.”

Jon like he probably missed a step in there somewhere, but it seems reasonable. Maybe reasonable is the wrong word, but it seems like they can do it and also Jon definitely doesn’t have any better ideas. He looks at Reilly, expecting an objection.

Reilly just sighs. “Sure. Probably the best we’re gonna get, let’s do it.” He barely hesitates, just walks over to the beam and stabs the sword down into it. When Reilly lets go, the sword wobbles but stays upright. Bill wraps the wire tightly around the handle of the sword and then stops.

“Who’s going first?” he asks.

Jon sighs. “I’m already wet, might as well be me. Better to have the two of you at full strength, or whatever.”

“If you’re sure,” says Reilly, and Jon nods.

Bill holds the wire, and Jon and Reilly lift the beam into the water. It floats easily, and Jon once again crouches at the edge of the water, awkwardly lowering himself onto a lying position, clinging to the beam. His hands are in the water, and it feels already heavier than last time. “Come on, give me a push,” Jon says. He’s eager to get out of the water.

He hears a grunt behind him, and then Jon is gliding across the moat. He gets worried as he loses speed, but he makes it to the other bank with no trouble. Climbing onto the shore carefully, he turns to Bill and Reilly. Jon barely has to raise his voice to make himself heard. “It worked perfectly! Give me the other end of the wire,” he calls.

Bill lets go, and Jon reels it in. Once he has the end Bill was just holding, Jon says, “Delivery!” and kicks the beam back to the other two. It rolls concerningly, but the sword ends up on top, so Jon figures it’s fine.

There’s a brief discussion on the other side, and then Reilly climbs on the beam next. Bill gives him a shove, and Jon holds the wire taught. He only really has to pull on it once when the beam starts angling away from them, but the steady tug he give the wire brings Reilly back on course. Jon helps him off the beam, and they send the beam back once more.

Bill lies down on the beam even more carefully than Reilly had, struggling to get situated without launching himself prematurely. Finally, Bill is holding the beam, and he kicks firmly off the shore. Reilly and Jon shout as the beam rolls once more, but Bill manages to right it. Wordlessly, Jon pulls on the wire. The sword bends slightly, and Jon exchanges a frightened look with Reilly, but the sword holds, and Jon guides the beam toward them. Before it’s even reached the shore, Reilly leans out over the water to pull Bill in.

All on the same side of the moat once more, Reilly tugs the sword free and sits down heavily. “Can we just… take a break?”

Bill, amazingly, laughs. “Media timeout,” he chokes out, and Jon slowly feels a grin creep across his face.

“Gotta scrape the ice,” Jon suggests, and now Reilly joins in the laughter.

It takes them a minute to quiet back down, and Jon feels infinitely better. “I’m glad I’m with you guys,” he says impulsively. Bill nods silently.

“We can do this,” Reilly says, and Jon can feel the agreement in his words. They sit for another long moment, and then Bill gets up.

“Time to go in?” he asks, and Jon sighs.

“We’ve got to do it eventually.”

They walk toward the castle gate, the dark shadows seeming to loom over them impossibly high. 

A heavy wooden door stands open, waiting. Jon doesn’t bother looking around. On the other side of the door is a dark hall. It looks very much like how he would imagine a castle looking—stone floor, rough wooden furniture, very few decorations. The only light streams in through high, small windows, and even it looks grey and cold.

“Cheerful place,” Reilly comments.

Jon adds, “Yeah, super cozy.”

Their words echo slightly in the open room. Jon wonders who’s listening to them. The only door besides the one they entered through is on the far side of the hall, and it seems to lead to a dark corridor. Jon walks carefully toward it, checking to make sure nothing moves around them. Reilly is holding the sword out in front of him like a baseball bat, which might be comical in other circumstances.

Bill pulls the stone ring out of his pocket, and winces immediately after holding it up to his eye. “It’s all magic,” he informs them. “There’s so much here, it’s hard to look at.” Jon notices that Bill doesn’t put the stone back in his pocket, though, just keeps turning it over in his hand.

They get to the far door, which is indeed a small corridor. It’s not long into the hallway that it turns into a set of steep stairs leading up. There’s even less light in here, just enough to see by. The stairs go up for what seems like forever, and then turn into another corridor. This one takes several turns, and at one point, Jon is sure they should have run into their original hallway, but somehow it keeps going. There are no choices—no sets of doors, no forks in the path.

“Are we, um,” Jon starts. “Following a path, or being led into a trap?”

“Does it matter?” asks Reilly, glaring at the walls. “I feel like it’s getting smaller.”

Bill makes a face, and then very visibly forces himself to smile. “Look on the bright side. We can’t get lost, or split up.”

Several turns later, the hallway leads to another set of stairs, spiralling down into even deeper darkness. When Jon looks back at the other two, their armor looks almost solid. He carefully walks down the stairs, holding himself against the wall of the stairwell. The stone is cold under his hand.

At the bottom of the stairs, yet another corridor leads away. As they begin walking down it, Jon thinks he notices the floor sloping up. There’s slightly more light coming from ahead of them, and the walls don’t seem quite so close. He stops.

“I think that’s where we’re going,” he whispers. Reilly peers ahead and then nods.

“Seems right.” Smiling a little, Reilly says, “Are we ready for the boss fight?”

“Seriously?” asks Jon, shaking his head. “I can’t believe you’re thinking about video games.”

“What about this scenario isn’t a video game?” challenges Reilly. “Anyway, I’m serious. Should we do anything before we walk up there?”

Jon shrugs. “Probably, but it’s not like I can think of anything to do, so….”

“Knights need something to fight for, right?” says Bill, like he’s been thinking about it. Stepping up to Jon, he leans forward and solemnly kisses him on the forehead. Jon wants to laugh, to make a joke out of it, but he doesn’t. As he watches Bill do the same to Reilly, Jon thinks about the team. He remembers how it feels to play against someone’s old team, that surge of energy knowing that every game is personal. He thinks about the other guys on the team, the ones who aren’t here, their easy support of this whole ridiculous quest. Jon can feel the armor hanging heavy on his whole body, but he knows, somehow, that it wouldn’t slow him down at all.

Reilly is nodding at Bill, looking determined and a little amped up. Jon is suddenly very grateful to have them with him, and maybe inspired by Bill, maybe just following through on an idle thought, he moves over to them. “For each other?” he asks, and then Jon kisses Bill. It’s quick, and Bill is mostly just frozen, probably out of surprise. Before either of them can react, Jon pulls back, turns, and kisses Reilly as well.

Jon’s not sure if he’d ever be able to explain it, but he knows it was the right thing to do. He can feel a slight tug on his chest toward the other two, like he had when they first crossed through the door, like he had been feeling pulled to their destination this whole time. Maybe it’s because of the story they’re living through, or maybe just because feeling someone else’s body helped him keep hold of reality in this strange place. Jon doesn’t regret it, and when he hears Bill’s sharp breath behind him, he thinks perhaps that it’s more than just a simple connection.

Reilly is giving him an unreadable look when Jon pulls back. Jon coughs awkwardly.

“We should go in,” Bill says, his cheeks pinker than usual. “But, uh, I’d like to come back to that. Eventually.” That’s more encouraging than Jon expected from either of them, and he feels a little seed of hope start growing in his chest. It’s not much of a seed and Jon knows that it can wait until they’re back in Vegas, in their regular lives. In the meantime, they have a quest to finish. 

Almost simultaneously, they turn and walk toward the end of the corridor. It must have gotten wider at some point, because they can walk side by side for the first time since the entrance hall.

They come out of the hall into another cavernous room. It’s empty, except for a glossy black throne in the center. Lounging across it, looking very out of place in a dark t-shirt and jeans, is Flower.

“You made it,” he says brightly, as casual as if they were at practice. Jon doesn’t know what’s going on, but he doesn’t trust it. He walks closer anyway.

It looks like Flower. The way he’s sprawled across the throne, propping his head on one arm, highlights the surprising muscle in his arms, and he smiles easily as the three of them walk closer. He doesn’t move, though.

“Hi,” Bill says cautiously. “Why are you here? We’ve missed you.”

Flower waves off the question lazily. “Did you have any trouble finding me? I know this isn’t the easiest place to get to—how did you get here, exactly anyway? Why the three of you?” Jon listens to the stream of questions and feels sick to his stomach.

Reilly is the first one to say it. “You’re not really Flower.” It’s not a question, but it gets a reaction from the— _person_ on the throne.

He stands up, moving with a liquid grace even beyond Flower’s usual agility, and prowls over to them. If there was any last thought that maybe this was Flower, it’s gone now. There’s no way this thing is human.

Standing uncomfortable close to Reilly, it asks, “So what if I’m not? Do you truly know him? Trust him? You don’t even know what he could be hiding.” It’s not smiling any longer.

Bill moves toward Reilly, getting in the thing’s face. “It doesn’t matter. We need our goalie back, we have to play hockey,” he says simply.

The thing sneers, an ugly, unfamiliar expression on Flower’s face. “Oh, yes. Hockey,” it spits. “Hockey is so meaningless, but I suppose it has its uses. It means he has all of Las Vegas wrapped around his finger, and they would do anything for him. For me.” It smiles again, the cheerful grin turning nasty as it says, “ _You_ would do anything for him. He has so much power over you, and you just give it to him. Maybe it’s time someone showed you how dangerous that is.” The thing takes a step back, looking between them all.

Jon wants to punch something. Something about hearing this come out of Flower is making it so much worse, and Jon hates that the thing knew that.

Reilly steps up to it again. “I challenge you to a duel,” he says, and Jon can see his free hand trembling. He raises the sword in front of him as if the thing had missed his meaning. Jon doesn’t know what to do.

The thing laughs, the loud sound ringing in the empty room. “A duel you will have, then,” it says, and waves its hand. The shadows at the edges of the room rush toward them and form into a dark human shape. There’s no depth to it, but it holds a massive sword. It approaches Reilly as the thing wearing Flower steps back to the throne.

The armor around Reilly is solid, glimmering in the low light. Reilly makes an awkward swing with the sword that the dark shape bats away easily. Suddenly, Jon thinks he hears the old woman’s laugh again, and Reilly’s back straightens. He steps into a crouched stance, and changes his grip on the sword. It no longer looks out of place, but as natural in Reilly’s hand as his stick.

Jon doesn’t know much about sword fighting beyond watching shitty action movies over the years, but he can tell that this is much quicker and much more dangerous than any stunt in a movie. They don’t make fancy moves, thrusting or whirling their blades; instead, they trade heavy, deliberate slashes that glance off Reilly’s armor and sweep past the shadows. Reilly has circled the shadow figure, and he glances at Jon and Bill quickly. Jon doesn’t know what he sees, but it seems to give Reilly the confidence to go after the shadow for real.

The duel doesn’t last much longer. Reilly moves his sword impressively fast, faster than the shadow can keep up with, and it glows faintly, slicing through the shadow, which vanishes under the onslaught.

Reilly faces the throne. “I beat your champion,” he says, and Jon hears the echo of a thousand other stories in that sentence. “Do we get Flower back now?”

The thing glares back. “You think one duel is enough to win him back? You know even less than I thought.”

Bill steps up beside Reilly. “I challenge you to a duel, then.”

It laughs again. “No, no, this is my turn to choose the challenge.” It claps suddenly, and a large bowl appears before them. It has several jagged holes broken through it, and the thing claps once more. A stream of water begins pouring from the air between them and the throne. The thing only says, “Fill the bowl.”

Jon moves to pick up the bowl, but Reilly holds him back. “I think it has to be Bill this time,” he says.

Bill picks up the bowl, which is obviously heavier than he expected. He tries to cover the holes with his hands, holding it up to the water, but there’s too many openings. Bill tries again, and then sets the bowl down. He walks around the water, sticks his hand in it, and frowns down at the bowl.

The thing taps its fingers impatiently on the arm of the throne. “If you’re going to take this long, I’ll have to make it more interesting. Time’s ticking,” it says, and Jon begins hearing a measured tick-tock noise. Bill doesn’t even look up, just stares at the bowl, his eyebrows drawn together in concentration.

Over the sudden clock noise, Jon hears a rustle that seems to pass through the room. Bill looks up and smiles. He takes the wire out of his pocket, and runs his hand along it. Jon thought it had been clean, but he can clearly see sap covering it now. Bill takes a handful of the sap and dobs it one of the holes in the bowl. With one more handful, he manages to stop up that hole, and he repeats the process for the others. There seems to be an endless amount of sap on the wire, and it seems to harden quickly. The holes all plugged, Bill holds the bowl into the water. It fills quickly, and when it’s done, he walks a few steps toward the throne. He offers the bowl to the thing on the throne.

“Here. Now can we have Flower back?”

The thing snarls horribly, lunging out of the throne to knock the bowl out of Bill’s hands. “No,” it says, its voice reverberating throughout the room. “No,” it growls once more and the image of Flower disintegrates, leaving a terrible dark tear in the air. It reminds Jon of oil spills, dark and shining and moving disturbingly. “If you want your goalie, take him then!”

Between one blink and the next, the whole room is filled with versions of Flower. Some are wearing full gear, looking as if they’ve just stepped off the ice. Others are wearing suits, workout clothes, even a few in Penguins shirts.

Jon can feel the press of Bill’s kiss on his forehead, the warmth of Reilly’s lips against his. It gives him the courage to step forward. It doesn’t give him any ideas, though.

How is he supposed to do this? He asks, in French, “Where are you?” With no better ideas, Jon feels obligated to try. The whole crowd starts answering, and Jon can barely make out individuals, as each identical voice seems to be saying something different. The brief moment of courage fails him, and Jon starts to panic. Why hadn’t he asked the others, he thinks, why hadn’t he let one of them try? What is he even supposed to do?

The tear in the sky shifts even more, and Jon thinks it might be in triumph. That’s what gets him to move, because he hates the idea of losing. Jon walks into the crowd, making eye contact with each version of Flower. Some of them try to convince him that they’re real, offering the names of Flower’s children, repeating what he’d told Jon the first time they met on the Knights, or just joking with him.

Jon doesn’t want to give up. He doesn’t want to let Bill and Reilly down, doesn’t want to let Flower down most of all. The thing wasn’t wrong—he would do anything for Flower, all of them would. There must be something that could help him, some way he could figure this out. The other challenges—Reilly had used the sword from the old woman, Bill had used the wire from the Joshua tree. What was left?

The raven. What had the raven told them? Something about trust… trust your allies, Jon suddenly remembers. He looks up at the versions of Flower assembled around him. _Trust your allies_ , Jon thinks, repeating it as a mantra.

Jon drops to one knee. “I’m yours,” he says. He can’t see most of the crowd, but Flower in front of him grins sharply.

The rumble shakes the whole castle as the shifting darkness grows, towering and triumphant. Through all the noise, Jon hears someone gasp. It’s not Bill or Reilly.

Jon turns quickly and his gaze goes straight to the Flower at the edge of the crowd, almost like he’d been trying to get to Reilly and Bill, his hand outstretched as if to stop Jon. “No,” Flower whispers, and Jon knows.

The other versions of Flower try to grab at Jon, pull him back toward the throne where the dark tear has opened fully from floor to ceiling, but Jon walks confidently toward Flower, and when he gets there, he puts his hand on Flower’s head like they’re on the ice after a win.

“Time to come home,” Jon says.

There’s a horrendous noise behind him, screams and breaking glass and shrieking, twisting metal. Flower, the real Flower, leans his head against Jon’s quickly, and then steps away. He looks up at the darkness. “Fuck off,” he says easily.

The sound continues for a few seconds and then, just as suddenly as it had come, stops. The room is empty when Jon looks around. No throne, no darkness, no identical crowd. Just the four of them, and Jon is quickly enveloped by Bill and Reilly in a tight hug.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jon says, and they all head back to the corridor. This time, instead of leading them back and forth in impossible ways, it goes straight to a staircase leading up. At the top of the stairs is a short hallway that takes them back to the entrance hall. They leave the castle quickly, and Jon is amazed that Flower seems unaffected by all this. He’s not even hurrying.

Outside, the moat greets them, but before Jon can complain about having to go back across, it vanishes. He turns around, and sees the castle melt away into the fog as well. They walk further and come to the edge of the desert. Jon welcomes the burning heat of the sun beating down.

“Maybe we should take a break,” Bill suggests, and sits down right there. He looks exhausted, and Jon realizes he feels exhausted himself. He looks to Flower, and understands how he’d been so calm in the castle.

Flower’s eyes are closed, but Jon can see how tired, how frightened he looks. It’s not the first time Jon has realized how good Flower is at putting on a happy mask, but it’s the most dramatic. He opens his eyes and looks at Jon.

“How did you know? How did you know it was me?” Flower asks urgently.

Jon smiles a little, noticing Bill and Reilly watching with interest. “I didn’t, but I trusted you not to let anything happen to me. We’re your team,” Jon says, simply.

A smile spreads across Flower’s face slowly, and it’s infinitely better than anything that thing had tried.

“Good to know,” Flower says. “How long did I miss?”

**Author's Note:**

> [Riddle from Little_Red_Fox on reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1lxxup/i_need_some_good_riddles_for_dd_any_subject_any/)
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> stories that vaguely inspired this, even though they're not really related at all: King Pole, Gallows Pole, Bottle Tree, by Elizabeth Bear, and Joshua Tree, by Emma Bull. if you don't know what joshua trees look like, i highly suggest googling them, because they're super unusual and i'm obsessed like only a midwesterner who's been to the southwest once can be, probably.


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